Winnie ille Pu: things that puzzle me

Latin Learning Latin
1

Hello,

I’m doing a careful reading of Winnie ille Pu and I found things I can’t explain, and I wonder if it’s because I don’t get it or because of errors in the text. So I’d like to share the problematic points and have your opinion:

This ‘cum’ seems to be too much here.

Let’s suppose that from ‘scīlicet’ onwards the text is in the indirect speech, or some kind of quote, is it correct to have ‘suus’ here?

Same here. If the sentence is an image of what they think, is it correct to have ‘sē’ instead of ‘eōs’?

Shouldn’t it be quōdam?

Shouldn’t it be ‘quandam’? If it’s ‘quendam’, what’s the point here?

Būbō says something Pu doesn’t understand, so Pu thinks he sneezed. It seems that ‘loquēns’ would be slightly better in that context.

Can ‘quot’ be used with a genitive?

Same as with ‘loquendō’: I don’t feel like ‘trānseundō’ is quite right here and that ‘trānsiēns’ is better.

Is this sentence correct? Doesn’t ‘reputāre’ take the accusative only?

The English version has ‘And have you got any string?’. So shouldn’t we have ‘quendam’ instead of ‘quidem’?

Shouldn’t be ‘Nōnnūllīs hōrīs post’?

Shouldn’t it be ‘salientēs’ instead?

That’s it for now. Any clarification about any of these points will be appreciated.

2

Nobody?

3

You might have more luck presenting one thing at the time, as people may be overwhelmed. The first thing:

[Lewis Short

D With a means or instrument, considered as attending or accompanying the actor in his action (so most freq. anteclass., or in the poets and scientific writers): acribus inter se cum armis confligere,Lucil. ap. Non. p. 261, 6: effundit voces proprio cum pectore,Enn. ap. Serv. ad Verg. G. 2, 424: cum voce maximā conclamat, Claud. Quadrig. ap. Gell. 9, 13, 10: cum linguā lingere, Cat. 98, 3: cum suo gurgite accepit venientem (fluvius), Verg. A. 9, 816: cum vino et oleo ungere, Veg. 1, 11, 8 et saep.: terra in Augurum libris scripta cum R uno, Varr. L. L. 5, § 21 Müll.](https://logeion.uchicago.edu/cum)

The translator did not use the ablative alone. Maybe because the original sounded antiquated?

4

I get the point, but I don’t ask people to answer everything at once. As I have a significant number of questions, I thought it would be more convenient like this.

That makes sense. Winnie intents to fly with the balloon and get honey with it. That’s the kind of subtlety I was missing.

Thanks, that helps me a lot!

5

Well okay, let’s do it little by little.

Is there some way so that ‘suus’ is justified here? This usage doesn’t fit in what I currently know and understand of this pronoun. I would expect either ‘avum suum vocārī esse [dīxit]’, or ‘avus ejus ita vocābātur’.

6

I have a feeling you’re being thrown by scilicet here, which just means naturally or of course. It’s being used here as a particle affirming a fact, not as an impersonal verb followed by acc. and inf. Quia (because/since) introduces the subordinate clause. The antecedent of suus is porcellus.

7

Well, no, I don’t have troubles with it, as the sentence could work as well without it:

Porcellus in sententiā persevērāvit, quia avus suus ita vocābātur

My problem is ‘suus’. I acknowledge that generally speaking, I’m not familiar with its nominative form and its use. But still, given the context, as far as I know, the word ‘ejus’ should be used (in a classical setting), unless the last part of the sentence is some indirect speech as follows:

Porcellus in sententiā persevērāvit, quia “scīlicet avus suus ita vocābātur”

But is it correct in that context? I’m not quite sure.

8

Suus is used where reference is made to the grammatical subject of the sentence. So Porcellus is the subject of persevērāvit and also vocābātur so it seems one should use suus rather than eius.

Thats how it seems to me, happy as ever to be corrected.

9

Well in fact, ‘avus’ is the subject of ‘vocābātur’, as can be further seen in the English version:

Christopher Robin said you couldn’t be called ‘Trespassers W’, and Piglet said yes, you could, because his grandfather was, and […]

10

Of course it is.

11

Hm if I understand correctly, Porcellus talks about his own grandfather, so ejus would better fit only if he was talking of someone else’s grandfather. If I’m correct about this, I guess it’s settled and I can move on to the next point.

Again a problem with the reflexive. Why ‘sē’? The expected word would be ‘eōs’ to my knowledge. The only way I can think of to make it sound correct is that it’s to be taken as their own thoughts in some kind of indirect speech, but I’m not sure it works like that.

12

Are you happy with the other uses of suus eg

“Porcellus tempus ducebat Puo quid avus suus TRANSITUS VE fecisset ad rigorem post insectationem levandum,…” p 27

"APRICISSIMO QUODEM DIE Pu sedato gressu summam in silvam se contulit, quid amicus suus Christophorus Robinus de ursis generaliter sentiret, speculatum. " p 80

These examples show clearly the rule that suus is used when it refers to the grammatical subject of the sentence.

In "Negavit Christophorus Robinus aliquem "Transitus Ve’ vocari posse, sed Porcellus in sententia perseveravit, quia scilicet avus suus ita vocabatur et erat "Transitus Vehi’ breviter complexus, quod erat "Transitus Vehilius’ breviter complexus.

I think we agree that that suus refers to Porcellus the grammatical subject of the clause preceding “quia scilicet avus suus ita vocabatur”, if eius had been used there might be some confusion as to whether it referred to Porcellus or “Christophorus Robinus”. Indeed I would have read it as referring to Christophorus Robinus.

13

To be honest, I never had any chance to see ‘suus’ in the nominative until now, and didn’t have any rule about it. So any use was going to be problematic. :slight_smile:

Now I do understand that specific use, exchanging with you helped me a lot.

14

You seem to have got it and without wanting to labour the point you might find the following from the Companion to Familia Latina (LLPSI) helpful

Possessives: eius/suus

English has one set of possessives for the 3rd person: his, her, its. Latin has two:

the genitive pronoun . eius
the possessive adjective. suus, -a, -um

Compare the following two sentences:

Dāvus sacculum eius sūmit. . Davus takes his (someone else’s) bag.
Dāvus sacculum suum sūmit. Davus takes his own bag.

Both eius and suus, -a, -um mean his, her, it’s, but they are not interchangeable.
To understand the difference, compare the two examples (ll.61–62):

Dāvus sacculum suum in mēnsā pōnit.
Iam sacculus eius in mēnsā est.

In the first sentence—Dāvus sacculum suum in mēnsā pōnit—the subject is Davus and the money also belongs to Davus; therefore “his” (or “his own”) is expressed by the adjective suum. When the “his” (or “hers” or “its”) refers back to the subject of the sentence, Latin uses the possessive adjective suus, -a, -um. In English, the word “own” is sometimes added to make the meaning plain: “his/her own.”

In the second sentence—Iam sacculus eius in mēnsā est—the subject is sacculus, and “his” is expressed by the genitive of the pronoun: eius.

Look at another example:

Iūlius pecūniam suam sūmit. Julius takes his (own) money.

Note that “his own” is feminine, because it modifies pecūniam, even though it is translated “his” and refers to Julius. An adjective always has the same gender, number, and case as the noun it modifies.

In other words, when:

• referring to something that belongs to the grammatical subject of the sentence, the adjective suus, -a, -um is used: Iūlius servum suum vocat.

• referring to something that does not belong to the grammatical subject of the clause, the pronoun eius is used: Servus eius abest.

15

Wow that’s kind of you to put all of this here, but that wasn’t really necessary. Although I don’t have any LLPSI related books in English, I did all the available exercises at least once, and had a good general view of su- vs ejus, with the exception of suus which is nowhere in FR or the exercitia. So I got troubled on a thing that now looks obvious to me… Grātiās summās tibi agō!

16

The reflexive is used here because the information is reported from the perspective of an implied party or parties. The general rule, as seneca has said, is that se/suus are used when referring to the subject of a sentence. There are exceptional situations, though, where the reflexive is the logical choice, even though its antecedent is not the subject, like here. The more you read, the more you will get a feel for these. You might also want to review sections 299 and 300 in Allen and Greenough.

17

Yess! So I got it right! I did have the feel, but needed the confirmation that it wasn’t a mistake or other. Thanks for the information.

And now, the next point:

This clearly looks like an error to me. If I’m right, we should have ‘quōdam’, not ‘quoddam’, unless it’s some archaic ablative: quōd-dam. Any thought about this?

18

I’ll take this as a confirmation of an error, although I would have preferred an explicit confirmation.

As for the next problematic point:

Quendam, really? This makes no sense to me. Quendam is accusative masculine and therefore can’t agree with caudam nor anything else.

English has:

in which Eeyore loses a tail and Pooh finds one

Thus the only word I can think of is quandam.

Do you have any idea about that matter? Thanks.

19

Yes, I agree. it seems to be a typo for quandam.

20

Answering out of order here, as this just caught my eye.

The use of the ablative gerund where Cicero, for instance, might have used a simple present participle, is a feature of later Latin (Tacitus, for example, does this a lot). There’s not a huge difference between saying ‘speaking’ or ‘by speaking’ if you think about it.

The ablative gerund would eventually come to be felt as equivalent to the present participle (and it would become the actual present participle in Spanish and Italian).

For an overview starting from Virgil, see Nutting’s ‘The Ablative Gerund as a Present Participle’ (The Classical Journal , Nov., 1926, Vol. 22, No. 2, pp. 131–4). If you can’t find it online, PM me and I’ll send it to you.